Milk fever, postparturient hypocalcemia, or parturient paresis is a disease, usually of dairy cows, characterized by reduced blood calcium levels. It is most common in the first few days of lactation, when demand for calcium for milk production exceeds the body's ability to mobilize calcium reserves. "Fever" is a misnomer, as body temperature during the disease is usually below normal. Low blood calcium levels interfere with muscle function throughout the body, causing general weakness, loss of appetite, and eventually heart failure. Hypocalcemia is more common in older animals (which have reduced ability to mobilize calcium from bone) and in certain breeds (such as Jersey cattle). Hypocalcemia, like milk fever, occurs occasionally at any time during the lactation or pregnancy and in many mammalian species.
Read more about Milk Fever: Clinical Signs, Treatment, Prevention
Famous quotes containing the word milk:
“Hume, and other skeptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow that will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)